More Articles

The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

The long wait to bring up the remaining gold from the SS Central America shipwreck may soon be over.

Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa will announce today that it has been chosen to retrieve what’s believed to be millions of dollars worth of gold coins, bars and ingots left behind 25 years ago by Columbus America Discovery Group, the Columbus-based shipwreck-salvaging company that found the wreck.

Ira O. Kane, the court-appointed receiver for Columbus America, has been working to set the recovery in motion.

“If all goes well, weather permitting, we’re prepared to begin,” he said. “We’re going to return to the Central America.”

Former Battelle scientist Tommy Thompson led a successful search in the late 1980s for the ship, a steamer that sank along the East Coast in 1857 with tons of gold in its hold. Thompson and his crew retrieved 3 tons of gold, silver and artifacts from the wreck, financed by $22 million from mostly central Ohio investors.

Investors, which include The Dispatch Printing Company, have received no payout from the expedition. The retrieved gold and silver was sold for more than $40 million in the early 2000s.

A Franklin County Common Pleas judge appointed Kane in May as receiver for Thompson’s companies, Recovery Limited and Columbus Exploration, after finding them insolvent.

Odyssey’s hiring and its agreement with the receivership are subject to approval by Judge Pat Sheeran. Kane said he will file documents about Odyssey with the court on Wednesday. Odyssey could begin the recovery as early as April 1, Kane said.

He selected Odyssey after seeking recovery proposals from nine companies.

The company discovered the SS Republic, a Civil War-era shipwreck, in 2003 and the HMS Victory, which sank in 1744, in 2008.

Its salvage of the British cargo steamship SS Gairsoppa, a 1941 shipwreck nearly 3 miles deep, has resulted in the recovery of more than 110 tons of silver. The Central America shipwreck is 8,000 feet deep off the coast of South Carolina.

Kane wouldn’t reveal details of the contract with Odyssey but said the receivership will retain the rights to the shipwreck claim.

Greg Stemm, Odyssey’s chief executive officer, called the Central America “one of the greatest shipwreck stories of all time.”

In October, he said that recovering the remaining treasure and artifacts from the Central America would cost between $10 million and $20 million.

Years of litigation in state and federal courts followed the discovery of the Central America.

Thompson has been a fugitive since a federal judge ordered his arrest in 2012 after he missed a court hearing.